Responding to 'migration’ and its (im)possible demands: the situation of ‘return’ in Cuba
In this online talk, part of the University of Bern Anthropology Research Seminars, Valerio Simoni reflects on the expectations and obligations that migration engenders, and the challenges this poses for returnees in Cuba. Drawn from the collaborative ERC funded project, ‘Returning to a better place: The (re)assessment of the “good life” in times of crisis, this ethnographic research shows how return migrants struggle to satisfy the economic demands of people ‘back home’, and find it difficult to articulate other sources of value for their mobile trajectories. This, in turn, can lead returnees to minimize the significance of migration and of the hopes and possibilities that are frequently associated with it. Based on such findings, the presentation raises broader epistemological questions about the way we approach migration-related experiences and categorizations.
Online, Tuesday 23 March 2021 at 18:15 CET